Skills?

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

4. I do not like the idea of merging skills. I understand that WotC noticed a lot of people do it as house rules, and wanted the please the audience, fine. I don't like it because it reduces the difference between characters. Also, when you get very few skills using the same ability, you could go ahead and just turn it into an ability check. 3ed introduced skills exactly to differentiate between a wise character that's good at listening, one that's good at spotting, one that's good at both and one that's good at none. Now you can only be good at both or none. Something you could be in 3ed only, but now you have some choices less. But ok, if everyone likes it the new way, then no big deal.

The difference between spot and listen in-game is entirely semantic, you know. The outcome is just "detected" or "not detected" either way.

With a single "perception" skill, you can flavor it however you wish. You can be Master Po: blind, but his hearing allows him to detect enemies, or the grasshopper at your feet. The only potential loss of meaningful gameplay comes from differentiating between silent and invisible foes for detection purposes. But Master Po could probably still find magically silent foes, via scent or by detecting the sheer wrongness of that depth of silence and estimating the epicenter of the phenomenon. Or, with the same perception skill, you can be eagle-eyed, with the ability to see a gnat from 1000 paces, and you detect the invisible foe by tiny puffs of dust or drips of water or whatever from his feet.

 

[Rystil Arden]

The difference between spot and listen in-game is entirely semantic, you know. The outcome is just "detected" or "not detected" either way.

With a single "perception" skill, you can flavor it however you wish. You can be Master Po: blind, but his hearing allows him to detect enemies, or the grasshopper at your feet. The only potential loss of meaningful gameplay comes from differentiating between silent and invisible foes for detection purposes. But Master Po could probably still find magically silent foes, via scent or by detecting the sheer wrongness of that depth of silence and estimating the epicenter of the phenomenon. Or, with the same perception skill, you can be eagle-eyed, with the ability to see a gnat from 1000 paces, and you detect the invisible foe by tiny puffs of dust or drips of water or whatever from his feet.

But what about the reverse? Why in the world does Master Po have any sort of penalty to detect creatures that are Invisible but otherwise unconcealed to the senses. And if the answer is that he doesn't, then why (mechanically, not from a RP perspective) would anybody not be Master Po?

 

[Li Shenron]

The difference between spot and listen in-game is entirely semantic, you know. The outcome is just "detected" or "not detected" either way.

For me it's not only that. IMHO the perception skill and the stealth skill are simply more valuable than most other skills, hence double cost for spot+listen and movesilently+hide has always felt quite appropriate to me, but YMMV.

 

[Li Shenron]

You can never be trained in a cross class skill. Want a fighter who is a good lute player? Tough. You can't have it.

Maybe the "extra trained skill" feat can be taken for a cross-class skill?

Anyway since you mention perform... for some things I just don't like the fact that an untrained PC is still only -5 from a trained one. This way, everyone becomes a decent lute player just by killing monsters in dungeons (but let's see if perform becomes trained-only...).

I don't dislike the idea of James Bond being a jack-of-all-trades. I dislike the idea that everyone automatically is like James Bond.

 

[Li Shenron]

Pure min/maxing.

Not at all. I'm talking about spreading skill points around, min-maxing is exactly doing the opposite: maxing what you can, and keeping the rest at 0. SW skills are automatically min-maxed (save for the Skill Focus). Which is an option I don't dislike, but I would prefer it to be just an option.

Plus, it mucks up adventure design - being able to figure out what is an appropriate DC becomes that much harder if you have to target both the person who full-maxed the skill, and the one who half-maxed it.

I don't know how you design adventures, but if I setup a challenge I either set it up compared to my players' PCs (which means I know who's going to disable the device or climb the wall), or I just don't target anyone and see if they make it. With the new system of skills you're pretty much doing the same as before, because if you used to target both the maxed and the half-maxed, now you will still target both: the maxed and the half-maxed. Or if you only targetted one, you will now still target one.

 

[Sun Knight]

A DC 15 skill check is a DC 15 skill check regardless if the character has 2 ranks in the skill or 20.

 

[IanArgent]

For me it's not only that. IMHO the perception skill and the stealth skill are simply more valuable than most other skills, hence double cost for spot+listen and movesilently+hide has always felt quite appropriate to me, but YMMV.

Maybe it's just my shadowrun grognard talking, but I've never had a problem with Stealth and Perception, rather that separate values for Move Silent/Hide and Spot/Listen. For one, unless you are absolutely not moving, you have to both hide and move silent to sneak, and spot and listen to oppose. I don't think they're important enough to merit being charged twice for the same skill.

My biggest concern about 4e having SWSE roles for skills?

You can never be trained in a cross class skill. Want a fighter who is a good lute player? Tough. You can't have it.
-Stuart

You can't be a good lute player now, what with the cross-class mechanics. If SWSE had a Perform skill (it doesn't, but there's an argument to be made that 4E might), an "unskilled" character could still about as good as the 3.x character who maxed Perform as a cross-class skill (10th level, the SWSE character has a 5+stat perform check, while the 3.x character has a 6+stat perform check) without blowing a valuable character resource on it. And if the fighter dips a class that does have perform on their class list, he can pick it up with a feat (or with a stat increase), and not suck because he didn't spend resources from first level on it. Less realistic? Sure. Fun > Realism here. That having been said, it is one of the reasons I don't think the SWSE skill system is perfect; merely that it is overall better than what we have now.

Anyway since you mention perform... for some things I just don't like the fact that an untrained PC is still only -5 from a trained one. This way, everyone becomes a decent lute player just by killing monsters in dungeons (but let's see if perform becomes trained-only...).

I don't dislike the idea of James Bond being a jack-of-all-trades. I dislike the idea that everyone automatically is like James Bond.

+5 is enough to differentiate between trained and untrained. It's certainly enough in BAB right now (at 20th level, the wizard is +5 behind the rogue/cleric who are +5 behind the fighter as far as BAB goes). Plus, you're forgetting the whole "trained-only" use of skills - you just can't attempt certain actions if you're not trained; actions that generally had a huge DC modifier in previous D20 games.

 

[Sun Knight]

I find less realism is less fun. The SWSE is just too cinematic for what I want in DnD. It may be good for Star Wars given it is based on the movies but the less the DnD game is like its movie the better.

 

[IanArgent]

Not at all. I'm talking about spreading skill points around, min-maxing is exactly doing the opposite: maxing what you can, and keeping the rest at 0. SW skills are automatically min-maxed (save for the Skill Focus). Which is an option I don't dislike, but I would prefer it to be just an option.

Spreading skill points around takes advantage of the fact that most skill checks aren't going to require max ranks if the entire party hast o pass them; that's the min-max aspect (you can get 2+ skills for the price of 1 depending on the skill, because you know (in the metagame) that you will never need max ranks in it. That's why it's min-maxing. In 3.x, you need 1 rank (for skills you need to be skilled in), 5 ranks (for synergy bonuses), half-max (for skills that all the party has to use so the checks will be lower) or max (for skills that are targeted at your character). SWSE gets rid of the first 2, and explicitly defines the second categories.

I don't know how you design adventures, but if I setup a challenge I either set it up compared to my players' PCs (which means I know who's going to disable the device or climb the wall), or I just don't target anyone and see if they make it. With the new system of skills you're pretty much doing the same as before, because if you used to target both the maxed and the half-maxed, now you will still target both: the maxed and the half-maxed. Or if you only targetted one, you will now still target one.

I don't design adventures right now, I buy them off the shelf, read them through once, and run them, because that's all I have time for. The author of the modules I buy has to both target my party, which has no rogue with maxed diplomacy, bluff, or forgery and the rogue who has focused on one of those three. Plus, he has to target the party where everyone has taken climb, and no-one has taken climb. Read some of my previous posts carefully - I've changed my position based on some arguments here. It's not that individual DMs can't makee the system work for their parties, it's that the system doesn't work if the adventure designer doesn't know the exact capabilities of the party. There's too much chance of missing the "correct" DC to challenge a party when you know nothing about the party that's going through the adventure. This also applies to inexperienced DMs running inexperienced players. D&D, for better or for worse, has to make it easy for 5 guys to pick up the core rules and run with it from the first. Otherwise, you run out of D&D players.

I find less realism is less fun. The SWSE is just too cinematic for what I want in DnD. It may be good for Star Wars given it is based on the movies but the less the DnD game is like its movie the better.

It's a lot easier to tone down from cinematic to make agritty game out of a cinematic game than to do the reverse. And it's not like D&D3 is particularly less cinematic right now that SWSE, except in the skill system (where it's much too gritty).

 

[Sun Knight]

The skill system is one of the things they got right in 3.5e.